From your neck to your fingers

I wonder if all jewelry artists make more of what they actually wear themselves? That's certainly the case for me, and other than necklaces, the one other piece of jewelry I wear religiously are rings.

So I've been busy making a few lately, and improving on my soldering and riveting skills. Every error is an opportunity to learn.

Sawing and riveting...

Another nameless ring

Soldering and experimenting with Vintaj patinas...

Captured

Riveting again...

Just Ring

And my favorite, soldering bezel wire and trying reticulation for the first time. Love the concept - heating silver to the point where it collapses onto itself and acquires this lovely texture... Kind of what happens to our souls - we're all the result of some life reticulation!

Textured Soul

But come on, I had to make necklaces as well, of course... And this one... well, it's a reminder.

 

 Hold on to what's precious

For the words that swell inside...

Wordcatcher

I wonder if I can...

Abandon dreams of far...

Hush my frantic heart...

Quieten my rushing mind...

Smile, breathe, and go slowly...



 

Smile, breathe and go slowly


For those of you who like dainty jewelry, look away now!

Because, from the top of my 5.1", I am increasingly making larger pieces... And I don't just make them for my tall(er) customers, no. I dare to wear them! (or they wear me, not sure which way around).



I'll just grab my purse and I'm ready to face the world

The longest name I've ever given to a piece.



Intense



 
I still have quite a few of these agate slices and I just love capturing them with prongs (improving my soldering skills) against a double layer of copper - you can see it better in the next pictures- so I see quite a few variations of these coming up in the future. And I just cannot make small pieces out of them! Strange for an introvert, really. Or maybe not.

Actually, many of my pieces have a double function - they can both adorn you and maybe even be used for self-defence. Yes, I am working on keeping the women of the world safer...



Zen


This piece was a physical workout! I had to be really in a zen mood to make it - thus the name (that plus the lotus design). I used a stencil to draw the design on the copper sheet and then sawed out every little piece. I love it against the patinated copper underneath. And the industrial feel the mini nuts and bolts give it. It's in my "to go or not to go" drawer. I won't tell you what's the usual final destination of the pieces that land in that drawer...

Oh, I remembered I just renewed my ID card and they measured my height while I was wearing high heels - I am now officially 5.3" tall... I feel an even larger piece coming up...

Where have you been, my muse?

She went off, all of a sudden...

Who can blame her? After all, she is my muse... She's bound to love travelling and exploring new places as much as I do.

But she pounded on my door the other day, and I rushed to let her in. Please don't leave me again.



The Muse
 

The Muse

I Shall Give You Diamonds
 

You're Quite the Number

Milady

Him & Her
 

Tres Jolie

Vincent

Live life with a little spice

Having finished a lovely lunch of sushi the other day with a friend, and while waiting for the bill sitting outside enjoying the beautiful African sun, I noticed a pot with this wonderful phrase etched across: live life with a little spice.

What a wonderful motto! What would life, and food, be without a little spice - which in my case may include truck loads of chilies, but I guess everyone can adjust to their taste! and just like that, I had a necklace in my head.

The metal pendant with the inspiring phrase, some metal components which I colored with the great Ranger patina inks I'm loving to use, and sari silk, carnelian stones, a fabric bead I picked up in Barcelona two years ago, a lampwork bead that was a gift from my friend Sandy Martin (go check her blog, http://sweetpeajewelry1.blogspot.com/), chains and crystals in spice colors... Immediately snatched by my friend Elizabeth - it's only fair, she was with me when I saw the inspiring phrase!


Live life with a little spice

I tried experimenting with etching lately. I wasn't very sucessfull and the etching was not very deep, and I need to figure out if it was the mix of the chemicals. I'm using hydrocloric acid which is the only chemical I can find here for this purpose. I left the pieces for hours but it didn't seem to make any difference. I had stamped a piece of metal with script lettering, etched it, then colored again with the Ranger inks and then used a bit of sandpaper to bring out the etching - to a sucessfully debatable degree.  

 

But I still love my "Seek Joy" necklace...

 

 

 

Seek Joy!



 

Seek Joy!

And don't forget to do it - seek it in everything you do!





Just do

You know, sometimes you don't want to say anything... Just do.


Sunshine and kisses

Coral, glass beads, keishi pearls, pendant by TheaToo

Shiny big things

Amethyst, bronze wire, handmade beads by Radiant Mind. Trying to master soldering prongs...

Bursting with life

Garnets and a handmade heart with "bursting garnet" learnt from Kim St. Jean's wonderful book Mixed Metal Mania.

 

 

 

 

 



Let's get started!

Happy New Year everyone!

I'm excited to start a brand new year - let's hope it's a peaceful, prosperous and full of creativity year for all.

A lot of the jewelry-community people chose one word to inspire them for the year to come. I'm greedy, so I'll take three! The first two are the words on the prayer box I got randomly at this year's jewelry workshop I attended:

Playfulness - because my life has been too serious in the last few years. And everyone needs to play more and rediscover the child in them. Mine has been quietly reading in a corner - like I actually did as a child. Now I want her to go out to the playground, run with the other kids, stumble, fall and get up again and have a wonderful carefree time.

Gratitude - because I want to remember and honor all the good things in my life (and they are many).

And finally,

Reinvention - because I do want to reinvent myself a bit this year, and try things I haven't done before. And not all of them are actually jewelry-oriented, and may take some time away from that and from the blog-writing (not that I'm the most prolyfic blogger), but I need to indulge the Curious George in me. Besides, 13 is my favorite number, so I might as well be optimistic about this year.

At Susan's workshop, she taught me to solder prongs and a ring band. My mom snatched it from me when I made a pit stop in Portugal on my way back. And I hadn't tried soldering again since I got back.

Until the first day of this year, that is (what better day to start?).

So I tried making a soldered ring as a gift for a friend's birthday today. The prongs were easy-peasy but when it came to the ring band... I tried soldering it 5 times unsuccessfully. Each time going back, removing the solder, pickling everything again, and again fluxing and prepping... But I am very stubborn when I want something...

Before the sixth time, I sat and thought for a while. What was wrong? I was using solder wire, which is round, and make a gap between the base of the ring and the band, and I know there can't be gaps. So I hammered the wire flat. I was also using a Dremel butane torch I recently got which has a very pointy flame. Was it hot enough? I used my butane plumber's torch, which has a much larger flame and quickly heat the whole ring. And in three seconds, it was soldered!

I don't know which of these did the trick - nor do I care right now. In time, I'll go by elimination to find out. For now, I'm just proud of my second soldered ring. Hope my friend likes it.

Happy Birthday Mila!

Molding the future

In my SLK jewelry workshop, one of the techniques Jen Cushman taught us was using molding putty to make molds of favorite pieces, or maybe of something you'd really like to use in jewelry but don't want to part with, and then use resin to fill them and recreate the piece.

It's quite easy to do, and I made a bunch of molds of items that Jen had that looked gorgeous so I can use them in the future pieces.

Here are the molds ready for the resin.

You can't really tell what will come out of a few of them, but I have at least one to show you - the only one I made into a piece of jewelry already. See the one on the top right corner?

Here it is all made into a resin piece and colored with Gilder's paste.

I paired it with another component I made at the workshop using a new technique - creating hollow forms with resin paper. The glitter inside the bezel moves around with the movement of the piece.
Then I hammered some bronze wire till kingdom and riveted it, to break the shape of the molded resin and the bezel, since they're the same.

It's a really long necklace and large too. I don't think I'll be selling it, and maybe not wear it either - I think I'll just hang it in my studio as a reminder of an awesome trip.

The one thing I retained most from the workshop was to be more adventurous with materials and tools, and free myself from preconceived ideas of how things should look like. I was so happy that with time my wrapped loops had become so perfectly symetrical, and when I looked at Susan's loops and saw how "carefree" they looked and how that actually made the piece more interesting (at least in my eyes), it opened a new door for me.

We were making resin paper and I decided to use a leaf that was part of our kit to create a large riveted pendant - and played with fire and oil pastels to give it texture. I used eyelets on the paper and then wrapped to the hammered and riveted piece.

Another one to adorn my studio.

I have jewelry dysmorphia...

You know, a bit like body dysmorphia - when you're a regular looking gal and you look in the mirror and see yourself 100 pounds heavier, toothless, boobs dropping to your knees and a moustache like Groucho Marx? (BTW, I always hate making references to any famous people in my blog - doesn't it always show your age?...)

Except that happens to me sometimes with jewelry - I have this image in my brain of what something will look like, I think I have all the tools, supplies and the ability - and when it's done, it has nothing to do with what the coggs in my brain are showing me. hmmmm....
Mind you, this time, it was not my fault. I hate you, colored aluminum tubes!

I wanted to make metal earrings with either negative space holes, or resin-filled holes, and I wanted a dangling bead matched by tubular rivets in the same color as the bead and the resin! I bought the colored aluminum tubing for my rivets, waiting the longest time as usual for them to arrive (if they did at all - thank you mail system for keeping things surprising for me) and then proceeded to make my earrings - beads and all had already been selected.

So here they are:

 

 

I knew you were going to ask about the matching tube rivets! well, it turns out they are only colored on the outside, so when I rivet the pink and the green aluminum tubing rivets, the color is actually on the inside and what you see is the white inside of the tubing, baaahhhhh...... (caption: this is me crying).

To  make myself feel better, made a bunch of my favorite earrings:

 



You know, these earrings are cut and sanded, the inside edge formed to accomodate the resin, the metal is colored, images glued and then resin poured, dangle beads wire-wrapped. It bugs me sometimes that:
1) my clients sometimes have no idea how much work goes into the process, or how long it can take - but maybe it's my responsibility to be better at talking about my work;
2) that while I make one pair of these, someone makes 3 necklaces stringing handmade beads from other artists in an artistic way and selling them.

But then again, that's not my path, and I always wanted to see my blood, sweat and tears in my work - the more the merrier. So I guess that's ok.

Disclaimer: I have a bunch of gold-filled earwires I bought at the very beginning and I'm trying to save a penny of two, so I used them in these earrings instead of making my own as usual. So sue me.

And then we made jewelry...

We started the workshop working with Ice Resin. I have been working with it for a while so there was a lot I already knew. But I still learned quite a bit, especially to be more adventurous with the resin and also to alter it, engraving it, and using paints and pastel colors to change it.

When we were in Paris, the concierge at out hotel wasn't the most polite and friendly person in the world and his favorite word was certainly "Non!" He actually ended up inspiring the first piece I made in Durfort. It is called "Monsieur Non". I used a picture of a man and took my revenge upon the concierge by painting his moustache red and giving him pink eye shadow. Used some sparkle and did not seal the paper so that the resin would seep in and make it look older. I applied the resin in layers, engraving the word "non" and using paint to highlight it.

The metal piece above it was another example of what we learnt. Susan taught us to use a forming block to create different shapes, and then we used nail polish to color them. Pretty cool...

My second piece is called "Cheeky love". I bought a few 1950's postcards at the flea market in Paris and one in particular I found very amusing. It was a photo of a couple in a bedroom, she had her arm in his, and he was saying something like (in French): "now that we are married, we can have some fun in this bedroom". I loved it! So I used it in a heart-shaped bezel, colored with oil pastels and glitter paper and added some blue rhinestone chain.

I finished it with sari silk and the heaviest gauge wire I ever used, 8 gauge. We were hammering away like crazy... I really love the look, but I'm note sure how much of this heavy wire I'll be able to use in the future - it takes a while to get it into the shape you want and in the meantime you and the neighbors are going deaf...

But after all that hammering, Nese, our wonderful cook, would prepare us lovely meals with local produce, wonderful French bread and lots and lots of cheese. I have never eaten better tomatoes in my life.

Here we are, getting ready to tuck in. Meals together were definitely a highlight of the trip.

Susan, Mary, Claire and Nese
 

France trip - Part III

I have a complaint about Paris. In many places in Europe, you can find a really nice coffee shop pretty early in the morning for a lovely breakfast. ,Last year in Barcelona, one street up from our hotel, my husband and I would go to Mauri  (a beautiful coffee shop from 1929) at 8am for wonderful coffee and I always had a sweet bun with pate de foie gras and a boiled egg (ok, I think I just lost some readers now, please bear with me, I eat funny…)

Now I thought I’d do the same in Paris, and dreamed of this Parisian coffee shop with wonderful crisp and buttery croissants. I headed out onto the streets on the first day with Sandy on my quest for such a place and it was like a ghost town! Everything was closed! So every day, I had my breakfast surrounded by couches with bed sheets on them. Oooompphhh! I was not a happy chappy! Parisian people, I will return – and next time I want my dream croissant in a nice setting waiting for me. Be warned.

On Monday, I headed alone to the Marais district. I had not been there in my previous visits to Paris, but it is certainly on my list for my next visit. I specifically wanted to visit the Place des Vosges, which is arguably the most beautiful square in Paris. It is the only one where you can step on the grass and it was filled with people enjoying the day, soaking some sun, people with babies and children, older people with their grandchildren playing ... Everyone taking it easy, enjoying the moment. And so did I.

The square is completely surrounded with beautiful arcades where you can find quaint boutiques, artisan ateliers, art galleries, trendy restaurants… Around the area there were brasseries, more shops, Jewish delicatessen full of food treasures.

 

After a few hours, I headed to the Père Lachaise cemetery.

You see, I had a special assignment: a picture of The Lizard King's (that's Jim Morrison for those born yesterday) grave to send to hubby. And here it is:

Very unassuming, hey? Can you believe they have maps for the cemetery, because there's so many people visiting to see the famous people's graves?

I like taking pictures of the lovely angel statues and others, and I'm planning on using some in my pieces. But maybe I won't tell anyone where I took them...

 

I think she looks so peaceful... 

 And I like the way it looks like he's watching over someone.

The following day we flew to Toulouse and then had another hour's drive to Durfort. Cathy was driving, I was navigating from the front seat, and Mary from the back. Cathy made a few French enemies navigating the roundabouts but we made it safe and sound and had a lovely trip through the beautiful French countryside.

We stopped in a neighboring village for lunch - we knew there would be nothing in Durfort - and had a wonderful meal and got to know each other better and bonded.

And we arrived in Durfort. La Cascade is a beautiful rustic house with stone walls and wooden shutters, quiet and romantic. The perfect setting for a lot of things - jewelry-making included, although I'm not sure the neighbors appreciated all the hammering we did...

The front of the house...

The back of the houses and the small patios were so inviting...

And every night I would be lulled to sleep by the sound of the cascade outside my room... Bliss...
I was so ready to start some jewelry-making the next day!